Are You Somewhere, Feeling Lonely?
by UpToEleven
Summary: Fame is the smallest world. Jesse St. James is fooling no one but himself. St. Berry futurefic.
1. 1

**This was my first ever attempt to write fic, originally posted a few months ago immediately following the finale but since reworked and rewritten. I have a thing for doomed couples, which may explain my affinity for St. Berry. Anyone who has heard the song "Sometime Around Midnight" by the Airborne Toxic Event will see immediately where I got my inspiration for this section of the story from.**  
**Spoilers through "Funk".**  
**Disclaimer: I do not own Glee, Jesse St. James, Rachel Berry, Finn Hudson, Billy Joel, Stephen Sondheim, Lionel Ritchie, New York City, suburban Ohio, or much of anything really. All I own is the way these words are tied together and the time it took to make them that way. Even so, I get no compensation for this whatsoever...besides the emotional capital that comes from your reviews :)**

After six years of basking in Los Angeles's yellow glow, he had come to realize that following his ardor would bring him nowhere but the cool blues of New York City. The echoing timbre of his smooth tenor belonged among orchestra pits and ornate vaulted ceilings, heavy velvet curtains, intricate gilded details. New York; he can't help the thought that it _should_ be hers. An e-mail a few years back from one of his contacts at Carmel High had informed him of her enrollment at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and the news had carried barely a glimmer of surprise for him. He had long supposed that in the wake of all they had been through there was expectation that they should divvy up the country, choosing seperate coasts on which to base their fame, far enough apart that their spotlights would not cross. But if they hadn't spoken all these years, how could he worry about breaking rules? How was he to recognize the boundaries, or even discern their existence? New York City was a springboard, where young and old migrated to see their dreams launched to the loftiest heights (all while easily forgetting the need to traipse so diligently over the dreams of others, shattered and crushed on the dirty concrete, to get there). What were the odds that in this mecca, this city of millions, he would even find himself in a position to step on her ballet-trained toes?

(Fame is the smallest world. Jesse St. James is fooling no one but himself.)

Auditions come, auditions go. So too do the callbacks. It's the starring roles that elude him, the way that nothing ever has. The dusty, dirty, mean streets of New York City have succeeded in adding the tiniest bit of dull tarnish to the shine that has always entered the room before Jesse St. James does. But there is a particularly promising audition - fingers crossed, he chuckles at the fact that he has come to allow faith to reside in superstition rather than purely in talent - and he meanders the streets with Sean and Brandon that night, enjoying the lights and the gin and the bigness of everything. The watch on his wrist flashes midnight and in suburban Ohio this means lights up and final call, the end of something, but not in New York - in New York it is only the beginning. Promise.

(He has heard it said that there is no waiting, there is only preparing.)

The band discards guitars and drums in favor of a harmonica and the tinkling keys of Piano Man on the ancient Steinway tucked nearly invisible in the back corner of the bar. All around him patrons warble the familiar refrains into their drinks, swaying back and forth, stars on their own musical stages. Jesse only listens, bathed in a neon glow; alcohol makes it easy to lose himself in the moment. New York makes it easy. His ears are ever musically trained and it is subconsciously that he finds himself picking through the chorus of voices, lingering over none for more than a few seconds. Except for one. A voice that brings him back to another time and another piano bench, a voice that could fill this room and spill out to the sidewalks beyond if only she would truly release it. He spins around, _No. It can't be_. But it is and there she stand by the far wall, every low light in the bar reflected off of her features. Rachel Berry. Catching spotlights where spotlights don't exist, always. The simplest of white dresses when everyone else wears shades of black, red, purple. Her hair is soft brown waves down her back, sparkles live in her chocolate eyes rivaled in intensity only by the showtime smile surrounding each syllable of her song. A friend leans close, whispers in her ear; her head tilts back in laughter but what tumbles from her lips instead is a sweet music, the chime of bells, something more beautiful than Joel or even Sondheim could hope to express. Upon recovery she lifts her doe eyes in succumb to the silent pull of his green ones, a catch, and if breath still remains in his lungs then he has no hope of recalling how to locate it. The temperature drops. Chills. Everything still, frozen, until the gaze is dropped. He whirls around, places both hands against the bar, and it is the only thing holding him immobile as the rest of the room continues to spin. He finds his breath and with it comes his showface and he can still feel her eyes on his back; he may stand there seconds or even hours before he feels fingertips brush his elbow.

"Jesse?"

He was unaware that the simple act of turning, a tiny practice in shifting weight, could ever bear so much resemblance to moving mountains. His activities of the earlier day are forgotten, inconsequential; this is the true audition. (No waiting, only preparing. _How could he be so unprepared_?)

"Hello, Rachel."

(_Hello. Is it me you're looking for_?)

And he can see it in her eyes. In her smile, though for him she doesn't yet wear one. Gone is the deluded self-confidence, the need for masking insecurities with over-compensation. It is all replaced with a quiet strength that radiates from within and he is immediately reminded of himself at age 18. If she is surprised to see him, angry at his intrusion to her world, her eyes betray nothing. There was a time when those eyes spoke volumes, revealing each inkling, thought, emotion. The adoration and vulnerability plainly visible in her glances during their high school days scared him, once; he finds that the seed of fear planted then still exists, only growing and intensifying now at this new idea of not ever knowing.

His fingertips rest on her shoulders as he leans in to kiss her cheek, a greeting. Ever poised, ever professional. His lips hover over her skin, just barely touching it, and one brown ringlet swings forward with her lean to brush against his jawline. He lowers his eyelids as her scent, apples and pomegranate, washes over him.

He is miles west and years back, seated at the music store's piano in Lima, inches from her. Her eyes are closed and there are furrows in her brow and though he senses her nerves she is still so open, entwining her voice into and around his own. He blankets the darkness of his ulterior motives with innocent sentiments borrowed from Lionel Ritchie, _tell me how to win your heart_, and yet in this moment he has found that he knows nothing of true intimacy. Awkward nights on basement couches and rushed encounters in dark backstage corners pale and crumble in comparison to what he experiences here, bathed in pure honesty and the sound of their voices, each note weaving the cord that ties them to one another. Her head nestles into his shoulder months later as she lies naked in his arms, his fingertips tracing the most intricate of patterns in the layer of sweat that still clings to her body. Apples and pomegranate. She sleeps then, and even in their quiet breathing they harmonize. Everything entwined: fingers, legs, voices. What she gives of herself on that night seems nothing in comparison to what he takes from her just two days later; from the McKinley auditorium stage he watches her. Sees the hurt and betrayal spread through her widened eyes, the slackening of her jaw, like she's been slapped. He is with Vocal Adrenaline, surrounded, engulfed by them. Andrea is there, nimble fingers exploring his body in a way that suggests familiarity with the territory, and of course they sing: _another one gone, another one gone, another one bites the dust_.

(And yet, she was still so willing to forgive.)

The bar. It's with regret that he withdraws from the embrace. A tiny smile plays with the corner of her mouth and she lifts her vodka tonic, asks how he's been. She has heard of his living in New York. "Running into one another was an inevitability." (_Inevitability_. He had allowed her a single inevitability back then, one among the world of them that he provided to himself. She would become a star. _Not a dream, an inevitability_.) She, too, has grown familiar with the harsh realities of life outside Lima. _Living as Somebody in Ohio doesn't hold quite so much weight in a city where you can't walk down a street without tripping over three more Somebodys_. They laugh, and though she is different it's still natural. Easy. She said once that life is a musical and he feels as though he could break into song here, take her hand and leave the bar, flawless choreography all the way down the street.

A hand appears on her shoulder, possessive, sweeping aside his delusions. His mind still in the past, Jesse glances up with half an expectation that it will be awkward, bumbling Finn Hudson that he finds standing there behind her. The one who had been there to pick up her pieces after he had carelessly strewn them about, or so he heard. But this hand belongs to a different man, one who is all dark skin and darker eyes behind smart glasses, with a perfectly executed showface as he extends his other hand in Jesse's direction for an introduction. He has the easy confidence of a male lead, an equal, someone who could belt Webber songs with the best of them; not that he should have expected anything less from Rachel Berry. Jesse can not be bothered with this man's name, his attention resides solely on his hand winding its way around her waist and coming to rest on her hip, it's getting late. She meets Jesse's eyes a final time, "...it was wonderful to see you," before allowing herself to be led away.

Jesse St. James recalls the day he walked away from Rachel Berry, with a clarity that does nothing to distinguish it from yesterday. Yolk drips from her shiny curls, eggshells cling to her jeans and lay in ruins at her feet. Insult added to injury. He approaches her, feeling the smooth surface of the final egg as he rotates it over and over in his palm. Her eyes blaze defiant as she challenges him, _do it_. And he can do no more to hurt her, following the deception and the manipulation and the abandonment, nothing more than this. He raises the egg to her forehead, watches those last flickers of hope in her eyes fade and die with his squeeze, sticky yellow rivulets streaming over his knuckles and down her face. But just before- a final proclivity, unbidden yet painfully true, flows from his lips to create a stain much more permanent, far more difficult to remove than egg yolk:

"I loved you."

_Loved you._

_Love you._

_Love._

He doesn't even realize that he drifts toward the door through which she made her exit moments ago. His friends' stares are pure confusion, "What is it, man? You look like you've seen a ghost." Their questions give way to protests and he is ignoring it all, allowing the door to swing shut behind him. He is stumbling beneath the street lights, she is nowhere in sight. Snuggled against _him_ in the back seat of a yellow cab, no doubt, or lacing her fingers through his on their easy walk home. Maybe he lifts her and carries her part of the way, offering relief to her aching feet after hours of standing in heels. Maybe he hums accompaniment as she performs snippets of her favorite ballets with a darkened pizzeria as a backdrop, the two of them succumbing to peals of laughter at their own bravado. Jesse St. James paces and whirls on the sidewalk, drunk with the gin and the thoughts and the memories. People stare as they pass.

He just has to see her. _He just has to see her_.

His cell phone is out of his pocket, and he flicks through his contacts until he locates her phone number. Still there, after all these years. He sinks to the sidewalk, back to a stained brick wall, and presses Send. One ring, two, and then her voice, a lilt of confusion revealing that his number has become unrecognizable. He can think of nothing to say, and so his words are Lionel's. "Hello...is it me you're looking for...?" Never before, in all his years of auditions and seductions and performances, has he sang a line with so much intent.

Through the speaker, her sharp intake of breath. A barely audible click.

_Call disconnected._

-x-x-x-

Rachel Berry stares at the phone folded in her lap, screen still illuminated from the recently discarded call. _Who was that_, Cooper asks, and she answers _no one_. He is satisfied with the response and throws an arm over her shoulder. She stares out the window of the taxi, destined for the life she has come to know, but only sees shelves lined with music books. Only hears a ghost of piano melody.

_...and I want to tell you so much, I love you_.

**Enjoy. Review!**


	2. 2

Rachel Berry makes her bed every morning. She brews coffee and toasts english muffins in the kitchen of her tiny Midtown apartment. She shimmies into skirts and buttons up blouses. She avoids jostling people or coming into contact with too many surfaces as she rides the subway to classes, workshops, rehearsals. She watches trashy daytime television with her roommate Alana on free afternoons. She meets Cooper - her boyfriend of 8 months - for dinner or a movie, and kisses him goodnight when he accompanies her to the door of her building. Some days, she'll wander the city for hours on end indulging in the fact that she's _here_, and just being here feels like making it. She visits the laundromat, she chases cabs, she grabs takeout. Rachel Berry does all of these tiny things, performs each of these simple acts that compose the life she has built since the day she left Lima, with its grape slushies and its small-town syndrome, far behind her.

Only now, she finds her day to day punctuated. She has become all but crippled by a need - a _compulsion_ - to have her cell phone with her at all times, to slide it constantly from her purse or pocket to check for messages. A text, a voicemail, _anything_, from him. She waits without knowing what she is waiting for, helpless to identify whether it is with hope or with dread that she flips her phone open each time. She has trained diligently to portray a facade and contributes a monumental effort to maintaining it, but the slip of her showface has become a vastly unwelcome and far more frequent occurrance. She stays curled on the couch despite Alana's pleas and cajoles as her friends depart for another of their many outings - pre-celebrations for their imminent college graduation - and cites exhaustion from the endless rehearsals for her senior showcase piece. But at rehearsal her voice falters over her selection of songs from _The Phantom of the Opera_; the lyrics to Think of Me and her recognition of their cruel accuracy suddenly carry far too much weight for her throat and lungs - _remember me once in a while, please promise me you'll try_. She takes five at her director's insistance and he pulls her aside at rehearsal's end: "Where is the heart that you used to throw into your singing? Find it, Berry." She knows that her heart dropped to her stomach in the bar that night and she has yet to collect it and refix it in its proper place, but with innocent smiles and apologies she assigns the blame to nerves as commencement and the eve of the showcase draw nearer. At night she closes her eyes to sleep and all she can hear above the familiar din of New York City traffic is his voice, singing those words from Lionel that they had made their own all those years ago.

It makes perfect sense that Jesse St. James is the one causing the pillars of Rachel Berry's life to crumble, bringing destruction to the walls of strength she built to protect herself. After all, it was Jesse St. James who's actions forced Rachel to construct them in the first place.

(_Think of me, think of me waking silent and resigned. Imagine me, trying too hard to put you from my mind_.)

She calls him, one night. A month has passed without a word, one month since the night after the bar when he used that voice to worm his way into her mind and reclaim residence in that small dark corner of her thoughts. An evening of dinner and sappy movies with her roommate leads her to indulge, uncharacteristically, in one too many glasses of Moscato. Alana rises from the couch destined for her bed and Rachel steals into her own bedroom, rummaging through a desk drawer until she recovers a small scrap of rose-colored paper. She never saved his number to her phone contacts, feeling that doing so would mean assigning a permanence to their encounter that she wasn't certain it deserved. Instead, ever dramatic, she had scrawled the digits down and cast the paper to the bottom of the drawer with an assurance to herself that she would never actually have need for it. Without allowing even a whisper of time to consider her actions she punches at the keypad, the sequence of numbers and then Send, regretting the decision only when the phone is at her ear and she hears the first insistent ring. She ends the call immediately. _What would she say to him anyway_?

Not two minutes later, he calls back.

She watches her phone dance with vibration on her bedspread, screen flashing a number unassigned but yet so familiar. She answers. Her hello sounds tiny and frail, even to her, and she wonders if he even hears it. But he responds: _Rachel_? The end of her name curled up into a question, like she is the last person that he was expecting to hear from. There is a gruffness to his voice and she wonders if she woke him; her digital clock betrays the hour at just after 11. She has no idea what to say; all of the words that had been bouncing about in her head took flight for destinations unknown the instant that she heard him say her name.

"This is silly. I shouldn't have called."

"Rachel. Are you all right?:" His voice, still gruff, is filled with a surprising amount of concern...and something else. Longing? She can't tell.

"Jesse, why did you call me that night after the bar? Why did you sing to me?" In true Rachel fashion she wants to ask a multitude of questions without the tiniest bit of time allowed for answers, but a crack in her voice alerts her to how childish she is sounding, how immature this whole thing is.

He sighs, and she can picture one hand running through his curls as was his habit in high school. "I don't know. I was drinking, and...God, I don't know what I was doing. I wasn't expecting to see you that night."

She stays silent, until he speaks again.

"I'm sorry, Rach. I'm sorry I did that to you."

She feels tears spring up, threatening to fill her voice and spill from the corners of her eyes. She waited so long for those two simple words from him, the boy who shattered her heart. Even when she wasn't aware that she was thinking of him, even when she was forgetting that he ever existed, she was waiting.

(Jesse St. James had never been one for swallowing pride.)

He asks to see her, and she is surprised to hear herself consent. She has no idea where in the city he lives but she suggests a diner off of 42nd St and he concedes to be there in half an hour's time. Hair wound into a loose knot at the nape of her neck, bare feet slid into flats, jacket shrugged on over her tank top and she is out the door. The lump in her stomach sinks a bit with each downward stair and settles as a brick in her abdomen as she steps out into the mid-spring chill that still blankets the New York City nights. She hails a cab and is the first to arrive at the diner, a relief, as it allows time to compose herself. At an audition or before a performance, this is when she would be singing scales or running through breathing exercises or chanting mantras: _gold stars, gold stars, gold stars_. She settles for simply turning her focus to the regulation of her breathing pattern, each breath held for 7 seconds before its release, a technique borrowed from the yoga classes that Alana insisted they attend twice a week. So entranced is she that she doesn't notice Jesse's arrival; she snaps from her reverie as he slides into the seat opposite. The wine is still swirling around in her head, she wonders if she would even be here otherwise.

"Rachel."

"Jesse."

Just one look is confirmation of her suspicions: there is no doubt that her call woke him. His curls are tousled and unruly and he wears his leather jacket over a plain white t-shirt, with rumpled jeans obviously fished from a laundry pile to which they had been previously discarded. She is surprised; she has never seen Jesse anything but perfectly kept, had been of the impression that his pride allowed for nothing else. As she follows his glance down to the yoga pants that she wears, the realization hits that he is probably thinking the same about her.

Their initial small talk more appropriately begs the label "essentially nonexistant talk". A tired-looking waitress sets a mug of coffee before each of them, and Jesse expresses surprise as Rachel pours cream into hers. "Veganism is an expensive habit to practice in New York City," she offers, by way of explanation. "I've made some compromises in my diet for the sake of continuing to follow my dreams here. Dairy products are okay, but I still can't bring myself to eat eggs..." She immediately drops her gaze to the contents of her mug, steam filling her eyes. All too easily she remembers that afternoon, the snickers of Vocal Adrenaline as she peeks at them through her fingers, her sole defense against their barrage of shells and yolks. _I hear you're a vegan, Berry_, Angela Cohen quips. _The souls of those poor egg fetuses are all on your conscience now_. And then he steps forward to deliver a blow of his own, but not in the way that she expected. Because just before he cracks the final egg against her hairline he spits words like poison at her, _I loved you_, accompanied by a look of deepest contempt. As if she brought this upon herself, as though she had done something so vile to him as to be deserving of such inhumane and heartless punishment.

She shakes her head, demanding that her mind rid itself of the images. She had, in fact, done nothing wrong; his words had been empty nearly to the point of not being words at all. Conclusions derived from years of intense therapy. But here he is across the table with his head lowered, elbows propped on the tabletop and both hands buried in his hair, the picture of angst. When his eyes lift to hers she is surprised to see a glimmer of real pain there, remeniscient of what she saw during his speech following the embarassing video debaucle that was "Run Joey Run". If he is acting now then he has only improved his skills since his epic performance of six years prior, when he played the part of the manipulative antagonist to her naive leading lady.

He opens his mouth but at first only breath in the form of a massive sigh escapes from his parted lips. "Rachel..." he begins, squeezing his eyes shut, fingers digging circles into his temples. "Damnit. There's nothing I can say to you right now, no excuse I can give, that would make what I did to you okay."

"But Jesse. Why..." She begins to interject and he holds his hand up, halting her words.

"Vocal Adrenaline was my life. They were my whole life, my only life. Being the lead, my scholarship to UCLA, getting out of Ohio - these were the only things that mattered to me then. If you remember correctly, my parents were mainly...interested in their own affairs. Not so much in nurturing their only son." He raises the corner of his mouth in the tiniest hint of a smirk, almost apologetic, like he knows it sounds like a sob story. "The team was my family...Andrea, and the guys, and Shelby...they were all that I had. The singing, the choreography, the sex, the intimidation - it all made up the only life I had any idea how to live." A pause. "They were scared of you, you know. When Shelby made us go to your Sectionals, when they saw you sing Barbra, they were scared. Not of your team, just of you. How you could grow, what you could become, all that heart when you sang. They knew my talents, they drafted me to try and break you for their amusement, for their peace of mind, That day in the music store...I was supposed to play with your emotions, to see if I could make them run away with you. They wanted me to build you up, so they could all laugh as I knocked you down."

Another pause, another sigh, and Rachel nearly laughs out loud at herself for entertaining the thought that this must be difficult for him. Difficult for _him_, to sit there and explain to _her_ that their relationship was nothing but a ruse concocted so that Vocal Adrenaline could get their kicks and _feel better about themselves_.

He goes on, explaining Shelby's discovery of and subsequent interference in their plans. How she hijacked the setup to fulfill her own, in some ways equally selfish, intentions. Rachel trains her eyes on the tabletop during his monologue and examines the sugar crystals scattered about on its surface, escapees from the packet that she had torn open to deposit in her coffee mug earlier. She sets about sweeping them into a tiny sugar mountain, much sweeter than the one that Jesse is building across the table as he piles justification upon justification in an attempt to excuse Shelby's plan and his own role in it.

"...so she approved my transfer and sent me off to McKinley to befriend you. Befriending you to lead you to her was the only thing I was enlisted to do." A softening in his voice, no trace of his usual arrogance. "I was never supposed to fall in love."

Rachel's eyes snap up, sugar pile forgotten.

"I truly relished each moment we spent together, Rachel." She watches a slow smile, genuine, begin its slow spread across his face. "You are without a doubt the most incredible and surprising person I have ever come to know."

She knows her eyes are full of questions. She knows she isn't breathing.

"Your ambition, your tangents, the way you argued your every opinion...each day of our courtship there was something brand new that I adored about you. Even as I was gaining your trust to bring you to Shelby, I was preparing my own to lead my heart to you."

"So...what...happened?" She despises the whisper in her voice and the desperation that she plainly hears there. She isn't supposed to care. _Strength, Berry...gold stars. Gold stars_.

"Shelby realized that her plan was a failure. Even as she was meeting you she could recognize the futility in what she had tried to accomplish...you were on your way, you would never need her in the way that she craved to be needed. And I came to realize that I could never have all of you, not so long as I had to compete with Finn Hudson, and that you had the potential to hurt me in a way that no one had ever been able to before. Shelby gave me the green light to return to Carmel and ice the cake of my senior year at the helm of Vocal Adrenaline, steering them to an all-but-guaranteed fourth consecutive National Championship. And I accepted.

She feels her face fall.

"I chose to leave McKinley, to leave you, and that was my cross to bear. But believe me when I say that my care for you was real, that it was never my intention to hurt you the way that I did. My return to Vocal Adrenaline...it wasn't to the fanfare that I had been expecting. The others were wary, they suspected that my feelings for you had...softened me. I needed to prove myself to them, I needed them behind me so that I could achieve my dreams...I told you, all I ever wanted was a ticket out of Ohio. I came up with the routine to Another One Bites The Dust thinking that performing it on your stage would do it, that kind of intimidation had always been enough before, but..."

He takes a long swallow of his coffee. Subsequently he winces, from the heat of it singeing his mouth or from the sting of the memories, or some combination of the two.

"The eggs were meant for Aural Intensity, for the windshields of their cars in the parking lot. When Andrea suggested that we detour back to McKinley...I could see in her eyes that it was my test. It was my test and I had to pass or they wouldn't back me, so I did it. But I hated them for it, for forcing me to choose so bluntly between what I had been working all my life for, and you. I even hated you in that moment just for being you, for giving weight to the decision and making it so much more difficult than it at one time would have been. Mostly it was just me that I hated, for the whole God damn ordeal. I always thought that they were the only ones who could lead me to where I needed to be...and look, today I barely know a single one of them anymore. I was wrong." Their eyes lock again. "I didn't know it until I saw you turn and walk out that door at Regionals."

Regionals. From her quiet vantage point at the back of the auditorium she had watched him with Vocal Adrenaline, every inch their male lead, looking as though he belonged nowhere in the world but with them. Certainly not with her. She had known in that moment that McKinley would lose, or maybe she had known it all along. She hated that she could see so much of the two of them in Carmel's performance; from his fingers skimming expertly over the piano keys to his effortless transition into flawlessly executed choreography, to the integration of steps they had performed together in McKinley's ballet studio only weeks before. She hated all of it but found that most of all she hated that she couldn't make herself place blame on him for his betrayal. Up on that stage, and in every move he made, Jesse St. James was a star in the making. One of the first things Rachel had ever learned of the world of fame was that stars in the making had a responsibility to take all actions necessary to reach the pinnacle of their height, their truest potential. It was a life of sacrifice, of compromise. Jesse never would have found what he needed with New Directions, at her side there had been nothing for him. This was his time, his place, and hers was yet to come. But it would come, she knew it and so did he. She had swallowed her pain and clung to this one simple thing, the only justification that she could understand. She had turned to leave the auditiorium as Vocal Adrenaline's performance came to a close, with Jesse's final line streaming out the door after her. _Nothing really matters to me_...

(She couldn't believe a single damn word.)

She wants to find the anger from all those years ago. She wants to look at him and see that same arrogant smirk, those same infuriating eyes. She certainly doesn't want to sympathize with him. And above all, she doesn't want to feel that twinge of her heartstrings, that flutter in her chest that means that her feelings haven't subsided. Not one bit.

"I want you to understand, Rachel. I meant what I said to you in that parking lot. I loved you, nearly every moment that I knew you before that day."

Before she knows what is happening, she is at her feet. Dizzy. And he is in front of her, just inches, and then no inches. His hands are cupping her jawbone and his fingers are tangled in her hair and his lips are on her lips and there is lightning, and the diner is spinning and they are spinning and everything is spinning wildly out of control. She can't stop the thoughts that _there is nothing but Jesse and that Jesse is all there is and that this is how she will reach the heights necessary to achieve her dreams, by kissing him, because when she is kissing him she is rising and he is rising and if they keep it up this way then they will touch the sky in no time gold stars gold stars gold stars replaced by St. James St. James St. James..._

BZZZZZZZ. BZZZZZZZ.

Her discarded phone skitters across the surface of the table, rescattering her diligently formed sugar piles. Spell broken. That would be Cooper, calling to say goodnight. His voice would contain no hint of concern, it never did. He would call her his shining star and wish her golden dreams. He would never, ever hurt her.

(An unfamiliar stage. A spotlight. An extended hand. _I want to introduce you to Jesse, the guy who's nuts about you. The guy who would never hurt you_.)

She scoops her phone up. Rummages through her wallet and tosses bills at the table, crumpled, their value unimportant. "I have to go." She makes it only a few steps before he is at her side, hand gripping her forearm, wheeling her around.

"Wait." His breathing is still ragged. "What happens now?"

"I don't know. I...I don't know." Flustered. "I have to go, Jesse. I've got to go home."

She starts once again for the door. He is right behind her. "When can I see you again..._can_ I see you again?"

"I just need to think. Just need time...time to think. Goodnight, Jesse." She is on the sidewalk now, backpedaling, raising her arm for a taxi. In true New York fashion, one appears as if by magic on the curb before her. She slides into the back seat, and is gone. He remains on the sidewalk, motionless, growing smaller and smaller in the rearview.

-x-x-x-

Jesse St. James climbs the stairs to his apartment. Fatigue has set in, or maybe just the weight of all that has happened; something is pushing against him with each step. He shakes his head in a futile attempt to dislodge the memories, leave them to bounce around in the hallway. That kiss...the sparks. His watch reveals to him that it's 1:48a.m. as he lets himself in the door, tosses the leather jacket to a chair, discards the jeans on the bathroom floor. Tiptoes across the hardwood, eager to crash, hoping for a dreamless sleep. He notices the eerie glow that the streetlights cast on the bedroom, their dull illumination of the left side of the bed where are form remains curled in slumber. His presence in the room causes her to stir and she sits up, auburn hair cascading over her shoulders. She rubs sleep from her eyes, squints at the clock on the bedside table.

"Jesse? Where were you...what time is it?"

"Shh," he whispers, sliding into bed next to her. "I had to take care of something. Didn't mean to wake you, Liv. Go back to sleep."

"Mmkay," she whispers, halfway there already. "Goodnight, my love."

He leans in, kisses her hair at the temple. "Goodnight."

Lying back and closing his eyes, all he sees is Rachel Berry. 16 years old, plaid jumper, blue turtleneck. Eyes wary, his hand extended.

_Hi, I'm Jesse._

_...I know who you are._


End file.
